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Lamarckian Research Programs in French Biology (1900–1970)

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The Darwinian Tradition in Context

Abstract

The situation of biology in France in the twentieth century has always been considered something of an oddity. The theories of the Darwinian Modern Synthesis and of population genetics were not included in standardized university curricula and the main research programs until the 1970s. Against the Darwinian picture that was developing abroad, French life scientists promoted various forms of Lamarckism. The aim of this chapter is to produce a general picture of these different twentieth century Lamarckian research programs which deeply structured various fields of the French life sciences, like morphology, zoology, paleontology but also microbiology and virology. We first recall the failure of the first Lamarckian program, based on a mechanistic understanding of life, and which aimed at explaining evolution in terms of cumulative adaptation through the inheritance of acquired characters. We show that during the interwar period, French Lamarckians were no longer unified in their understanding of the evolutionary process but instead defended a heterogeneous array of concepts. In particular, we examine philosopher Henri Bergson’s legacy, which was pivotal in the setting up of a second Lamarckian program that started to develop in the 1940s with the work of zoologists Albert Vandel and Pierre-Paul Grassé. While it is true that the various forms of Lamarckism delayed the reception of Darwinism and, to a lesser extent, genetics, we assess their impact on the way the Modern Synthesis and molecular biology were conceived and developed in France by non-Lamarckian biologists like Georges Teissier, Philippe L’Héritier, André Lwoff, or Jacques Monod.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The anthropologist and biologist Armand de Quatrefages (1810–1892) popularized the term “transformism” [transformisme] during the debates surrounding the reception of Darwin’s Origin of Species. To avoid the problems resulting from the polysemy of “evolution,” he proposed that “transformism” should be preferred to designate what would later be called the evolutionary theory (see de Quatrefages 1870: 14–15). From the 1870s, “transformism” was frequently used by French scientists for almost a century.

  2. 2.

    We would like to thank our friend and colleague Cristiana Oghiva-Pavie (Angers University, France) who translated for us part of Racovitza’s (1929) book that was published in Romanian.

  3. 3.

    Vandel claimed that he was inspired by Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s description of the law of “relais.”

  4. 4.

    Grassé heavily implies on several occasions that the creation of the idiomorphon involves, in some way or another, supernatural forces. Grassé became increasingly vocal about his catholic faith as he got older.

  5. 5.

    As early as in the late 1950s and early 1960s, L’Héritier used the term “epigenetics” [épigénétique] to denote this emerging field. Not only did he use the term, but he also proposed a definition which already fitted with our modern understanding of the concept (and despite the fact that, of course, molecular processes like DNA methylation were still completely unknown at the time): “The second [hereditary mechanism] […] only modifies the modes of expression of encoded structures […]. To designate this second type of hereditary mechanism, the term epigenetics has been proposed and seems well chosen.” (L’Héritier 1962: 16, our translation).

  6. 6.

    Because of their Jewish origins, they were arrested by the French police and deported to Auschwitz in December 1943 where they died (Gayon and Burian 2017).

  7. 7.

    In 1985, year of his death, Grassé was working on some new material, a book he would have entitled La Face cachée de l’évolution (The hidden side of evolution).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS, IHPST (UMR 8590, CNRS, Paris 1, ENS), 13, rue du Four, 75006, Paris, France

    Laurent Loison

  2. University of Leeds Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Emily Herring

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  1. Laurent Loison
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  2. Emily Herring
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Correspondence to Laurent Loison .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Liberal Education and Philosophy, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada

    Richard G. Delisle

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Loison, L., Herring, E. (2017). Lamarckian Research Programs in French Biology (1900–1970). In: Delisle, R. (eds) The Darwinian Tradition in Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69123-7_11

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